The 30-year-old woman also denied that she appeared in a YouTube video posted on July 10 where a veiled woman who was thought to be her claims to have converted to Christianity after having a dream.

“I am a Muslim, I’m fasting in Ramadan and I will not change my religion until judgment day,” she told the newspaper.

The woman said she was facing some family problem when her boss, a Lebanese-national, convinced her that the solution to her problems was to leave Saudi Arabia to a freer country.

“A Lebanese man and another Saudi colleague helped me flee Saudi Arabia to Bahrain, and from there to Qatar before going onwards to Lebanon,” she said. She alleges that when she arrived in Beirut she was taken to a monastery where she was asked to work as a maid.

The woman’s father filed a lawsuit against the two men for helping his daughter leave the country without his knowledge. The Lebanese man was reportedly jailed Monday in the city of Khobar on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia.

The kingdom applies a strict interpretation of Shariah, or Islamic law, and is the only country in the world where women are not allowed to drive.

No law specifically forbids women in Saudi Arabia from driving, but the interior minister formally banned them after 47 women were arrested and punished after demonstrating in cars in November 1990.

In January, the 89-year-old monarch appointed Sheikh Abdullatif Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh, a moderate, to head the notorious religious police commission, which enforces the kingdom’s severe version of sharia law.

Following his appointment, Sheikh banned members of the commission from harassing Saudi women over their behaviour and attire, raising hopes a more lenient force will ease draconian social constraints in the country.But the kingdom’s “religious establishment” is still to blame for the discrimination of women in Saudi Arabia, says liberal activist Suad Shemmari.

“Saudi women are treated as minors throughout their lives even if they hold high positions,” said Shemmari, who believes “there can never be reform in the kingdom without changing the status of women and treating them” as equals to men.

But the many restrictions on women have led to high rates of female unemployment, officially estimated at around 30 percent.

What do you think of the tracking system? Is it a sign that the rights of women in Saudi are only set to get worse? Leave us your comments below!